Using Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) with Microsoft Access for system development is great for tracking old versions, maintaining a professional Access development platform, and multi-developer environments. Being able to quickly see old versions of individual objects, differences over time, and check-in and check-out objects to prevent multiple developers from changing the same object are all wonderful features. Visual Source Safe is part of MSDN. By installing the Office/Access developer extensions/edition or Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO), VSS gets added to your Access menus.
Unfortunately, as Access databases get more objects, VSS slows down and can sometimes take minutes to add a new object to the database. Waiting for VSS to prompt you for every new object not only wastes time (especially if you don't want to add a temporary object to VSS), it disrupts the rhythm of system development. Fortunately, there's an easy way to work around this. Read this paper Speed Up Microsoft Access and Visual SourceSafe Integration for details, including Access 2010.
It also helps to periodically reduce the number of versions of objects available. As you know, VSS will give you the ability to roll back to an older version but it never deletes the older versions. This leads your VSS db to bloat in size. When we start having slow down issues (we automatically configure No to add objects), we make a copy of the db and then reduce from say 20 – 30 versions down to 2 or 3. So, it might only show versions 29, 30 and 31. Afterall, how often do you need to roll back to version 5 when you’re on version 30. It also goes without saying that internet will slow your response time way down as compared to intranet.
Hi Art, That sounds like a great idea. I’m not familiar with how you reduce the number of old versions? Do you do it for individual objects? Is there a global way to do that or is it based on labeling versions?